State v. Driver

The court - appointed counsel advanced this argument: “The present defendant is an alcoholic and this fact is acknowledged by all who have come into contact with him, from the arresting officer to the Court which sentenced him. This alcoholism, while not the reason for his imprisonment, is certainly the cause of it. His addiction has put him in jail. Yet he has not been assigned to a medical rehabilitation center but sent to the roads. As an impoverished inmate he cannot obtain outside medical aid. So for two years the State of North Carolina impounds the defendant, an acknowledgedly ill man,…